Sisters, 3 and 8, screamed for their mom while their trailer burned in Thornton

He saw a bearded man with blood on his hands. It was Engen. He told Herrington that there were a couple of kids in the trailer.

Firefighters arrived, learned that as many as three people could be still inside the trailer. They tried to enter the trailer to rescue the girls but were pushed back by the intensity of the blaze. The fire melted three metal walls, gutted the interior and shattered windows. It took about 10 minutes to extinguish the fire.

Fire gutted home and killed Cher and Sky MorehouseCourtesy of Susan Teer

The badly charred bodies of the two girls and their dog were found in their bedroom in a corner in the same area where Teer said she had heard their cries.

Engen smelled of alcohol and had bloodshot, glassy eyes, according to a Thornton Fire Department report. He easily lost his balance several times.

Herrington asked Engen if he had seen anything unusual and Engen told him that while he was inside the trailer he saw a fire ball in the middle of the trailer going to the front of the trailer.

When Thornton police spoke with Teer, she told them she was asleep in the south master bedroom when the fire broke out and that Engen was asleep on the couch, according to the police report.

But when two police officers questioned Engen later at Valley View Hospital and asked him if he recalled “exactly where he was” when the fire broke out he told them he “believed Susan and he were awake and sitting at the kitchen table before the fire broke out.”

He told them that he first saw the fire in the ceiling above the wood-burning furnace. He said the front room became entirely engulfed in flames and he ran towards the room where the girls were sleeping but was unable to get to them. He then left the trailer through the front door on the East side of the trailer.

Engen told the officers that he always leave the bedroom doors open because he heats the trailer with a wood stove.

Kirk Mitchell is a general assignment reporter at The Denver Post who focuses on criminal justice stories. He began working at the newspaper in 1998, after writing for newspapers in Mesa, Ariz., and Twin Falls, Idaho, and The Associated Press in Salt Lake City. Mitchell first started writing the Cold Case blog in Fall 2007, in part because Colorado has more than 1,400 unsolved homicides.